South Carolina Flooding: A Sign of Things to Come?

Well, it could produce some good outcomes, since we got a visit from our son Jonathan who decided to come to our new home in Asheville Sunday after his concert with the Winston Salem Symphony, versus returning home to flood drenched Columbia. My bet is that his concert schedule this week in Columbia and Charleston will all be cancelled, so that’s a direct economic impact on someone who gets paid by the gig. Not so good.

Nobody is willing to say the words climate change in this story, but I will. Scientists studying climate change are very conservative in attributing specific events to climate change. But as a layman somewhat knowledgeable about the science, I don’t have to be. I mean, how do they know this is a “1000 year flood”? They could just as easily say, “this is the sort of thing expected to happen as warming oceans produce more moisture through evaporation, and as the weather patterns meander and slow down more, because less icy arctic has weakened the jet stream”. Thus, it’s not a “1000 year flood”, it’s a “sign of what typical 5 or 10 year events will be in a warmer climate”. Then they could go further and say “it shouldn’t take too long for the people to realize that they cost of putting up with these sorts of events on a regular basis is far greater than the cost of converting to renewable energy”.

And converting to renewable energy is what the world must do to limit greenhouse gases and bring man’s contribution to further climate change to a halt.

A: One study has found that "a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen" (Roberson et al., 2002, p.15). By using a darker website, we hope to demonstrate that sometimes even the smallest changes can make a big difference in the long run.